Getting old

my wife, who is 3 years older than me, and me, are getting up there in age. We’ve been married for 44 years, since our early 20’s, to now our late 60’s. We’ve had a good life and we’re anticipating our golden years together. We knew that as we got older we would face health issues, and would retire, spending more time together. We traveled the world together, helped each other through all the challenges life threw at us, we were a team. Our son, and all our friends were envious of our relationship, and tried to have the same relationship with their partners that we had. We saved for our retirement, tried to accomplish our travel bucket list while we were young enough, but that didn’t work out exactly as planned. The major trips didn’t work out, like seeing the gorillas in Central Africa, trekking to base camp in Nepal, Egypt and the pyramids. Not having enough money in our savings account. But we knew that could happen, plans could always go wrong, it’s a fact of life and we would just change our goals and strategies But what no one told us that your friends and acquaintances would die. I mean, we realized that eventually everyone would die, it’s inevitable. But now it’s happening almost every week, if not every day.

when I was young I would see my parents sitting at the kitchen table reading the newspaper. They always turned first to the obituary page, and they would talk about a friend who had died or the neighbor on the corner who passed away suddenly. I was only 10 or 12 years old at the time, and never thought about it, or that I would go through it myself.

about 6 years ago, our older friends started dying, and my wife jokingly said we needed to get some younger friends, because our friends were all older than us and were dying off. So we did make some new young friends, a couple that were in the same line of business we were in, they were in their 50’s, and just recently they both died unexpectedly within a year of each other. That was a shock. Last night We learnt of another friend, about the same age as us, who died suddenly and unexpectedly. It was a major shock. No one told us that this would happen.

we would look at old photos we had taken of our friends years before, and their hair was black or brown, and they were young. We would laugh, because their hair was now streaked with gray, or totally gray, or bald, and their faces now are wrinkled. And when we looked in the mirror, the same things were happening to us. I had suffered a series of strokes a couple of years before, which sidelined me from our business and traveling, and I realized that my time on earth is drawing to a close. I also realized that every friend, family member, loved one, is precious, and that I must cherish them fully before too they go. Live every day as if it will be their last day, or mine. Try and squeeze in one more trip, or experience before it is too late, tell my wife I love her, tell your friends you cherish their friendship, and don’t be sad about getting old, rather embrace it and share yourself with everyone you know and meet.

so now, you have been told. Everyone around you will die at some point. It shouldn’t be a surprise, even though it will always be sad and a shock.